Health chiefs in Bradford were expected to get the first results from an emergency screening programme today telling them if any patients contracted a potentially fatal disease from a surgeon.

Hundreds of women are to be tested for hepatitis C after a former surgeon at the Bradford Royal Infirmary maternity unit was found to be carrying the disease.

A total of 376 women have been invited back to the hospital for tests, and the first clinic session was held on Friday night with another one on Saturday.

The clinics, where blood samples will be taken, continue all this week.

The results from the Friday and Saturday sessions could be available later today, said the hospital's operations director Philip Turner.

"Statistics show that the chances of women patients being infected are about 1 in 400," Mr Turner said.

"Here at Bradford we have over 350 women involved in the screening. We are hoping we won't get any positive results."

Hepatitis C is a viral infection spread by blood to blood contact, for example through a contaminated blood transfusion.

The disease causes inflammation of the liver, which can be the only symptom but a proportion of the cases go on to develop continuing liver inflammation and damage, which in the worst cases can lead to liver failure and death.

Mr Turner said nearly half of the women invited to the first clinic session on Friday evening did not attend.

Efforts were now being made to track each woman down and make another appointment.

"We will write to them all again and if they still don't turn up, we'll go through their GPs," Mr Turner said.

"We've said all along the chances of someone being infected are minimal, but we need to get these tests done - it's important. At the Saturday session we had 100 per cent attendance."

He said the blood samples were being sent to the Public Health Laboratory Service in Leeds and the results would be available within 48 hours.

The type of hepatitis C the doctor had was likely to have been contracted in the doctor's overseas home country, which has not been revealed.

The doctor was employed in Bradford in 1979 and 1980. The testing programme may turn up women who have been infected by the disease through another source.

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